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Saturday, June 13, 2009

My first wage slave software engineer job was unusual. My direct boss and most of my coworkers had the "productive" personality type. Almost nobody had the "parasitic" personality type. That's an interesting anomaly.

That job ended due to State violence. A larger corporation bought them out and they shut down the office I was working it. At the time, I thought it was a huge waste, because it was a really talented group. Now, I see it's irrelevant. It was a cellular phone company. The only valuable asset was the State license to operate, the broadcast spectrum. The rest of the assets were irrelevant.

When the FCC sold a bunch of broadcast spectrum for cell phones in the 1990s, there were incentives for small businesses to bid. A bunch of insiders bought spectrum cheaply, via capital borrowed from the banksters. They then sold a few years later for a huge profit. The net result was still a handful of large telecommunications corporations. The only difference is that a bunch of insiders made a tidy profit. The mandate for "small businesses buy spectrum" allowed the pork to be spread over a larger group of politically-connected insiders.

At all my jobs since then, at least one of my managers had the parasitic personality type. In retrospect, the best work environments were the ones where my boss had the productive personality type, and the worst jobs were the ones where my boss had the parasitic personality type. That's a bigger factor than *ANY* other issue. Regrettably, in most businesses, the parasites are pulling the strings.

In the late 1990s, the software industry started booming. The people who initially flocked to the software industry were the productive workers. They were happy for an environment where they could use their abilities without the drag of parasites.

Once the software industry was obviously here to stay, the parasites started colonizing the software industry. They could raise capital from the banksters and profitably buy out any business controlled by productive workers.

In the present, almost every business has a parasite pulling the strings.

"Two people are needed to start a business" is itself an evil fnord. The reason you need two co-founders is that one has the productive personality type and one has the parasitic personality type. The productive person does all the real work. The parasitic person takes most of the booty. From the productive workers' point of view, the parasite co-founder is protecting him from the other parasites in the Matrix. The productive worker doesn't have the interest or ability to deal with parasites.

Consider a typical job listing on Craigslist. The request may be "5 years PHP experience, 3 years Drupal experience, and 2 years of experience in three other specific development languages or frameworks."

I have the productive personality type. I submit my resume, and hope the hiring manager has a clue.

What would a parasite do? He edits his resume. He lies and says that he has 5 years of PHP experience or whatever else the job description demands.

All those requirements are silly anyway. Someone competent could learn as needed anyway.

In this manner, the wags slave job recruitment process selects in favor of dishonest people. Someone who lies about his experience gets plenty of interviews. An honest person is lost in the shuffle, because there's a ton of people submitting forged resumes that are perfect keyword matches for the job! I've considered lying on my resume, but why should I seek to work for an idiot?

It's obvious to anyone with half a clue that I'd be a very productive software engineer, even if I haven't worked much in the language before. Most wage slave employers are unwilling to make an investment of even a few weeks, in waiting for someone to learn a language. In my experience, other issues are harder to learn than a programming language. Understanding the business logic is usually the hardest part.

I'm wondering if that's the main reason the software industry is going downhill (along with the rest of the economy). In nearly every business, parasites are pulling the strings.

A productive worker doesn't just pay taxes to the government. A productive worker pays tax to the parasites who are his bosses at work or his business partners. The State isn't just government. The State is the way parasites control almost everyone. Having mostly cracked my pro-State brainwashing, it's hard for me to fit in, because parasites know they can't push me around.

The parasites colonized as part of a larger plan.The Fed started opening the floodgates in 1995 precisely to cause this to happen, so they could control the IT industry, before it created a large amount of capital outside of their control.

Interesting. I often see one founder as a more introverted productive worker ( substance) and the other as more of the public "face" or superficial bullshit person who deals the public ( style). I guess this more outgoing salesman-type is the parasite.

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My Favorite Links

Here is a collection of my favorite links.

Personal Finance

For personal finance, my most frequently visited site is Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance has the best system for watching your stock quotes during the day. I also like the Motley Fool. Both of these websites encourage you to do independent thinking about finance.

My favorite discount online broker is Vanguard. They are not the cheapest commission-wise, but their customer service has been excellent. Plus, they give a high credit interest rate on the cash portion of your account.

Mises, Rothbard, and Austrian Economics

The school of "Austrian Economics" advocates credit-based money instead of debt-based money. There are two separate websites, www.mises.org and www.mises.net. These philosophies are a precursor to agorism. However, they still hold out false hope that the people who control the government can be convinced to switch to a fair monetary system. They fall short of the correct conclusion that government itself is the problem.

The Mises and Austrian school is still a pro-State theory of economics. They say "government should adopt a sound monetary policy instead of an unsound monetary policy". They fall short of the truth, which is "Who needs a government?"

Agorism and Anarcho-Capitalism

The primary source most commonly cited is agorism.info. Agorism.info has good introductory material, but I'm already looking for more advanced topics. I also found TOLFA interesting. The Molinari Institute has a lot of interesting links.

The source with the most advanced material on agorism is Kevin Carson's The Mutualist Blog.

This link on the History of Money has a lot of interesting bits on how bankers have controlled the world's money supply for hundreds of years or longer. Unlike most other sources, it is very short and to the point. However, their recommended solution falls short of true agorism.

Freedomain is another good read. He doesn't update his blog often, but he has a lot of good stuff posted in the past.

Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog - This is a great source. He is tough to read at times, but his content is great. He's the best source on agorism I've seen. I like to take his topics and present them in simpler language. He updates his blog sporadically, but he has a lot of great content. It's also worth reading his other books and articles, which are available from his mutualist.org website. I also like the way Kevin Carson frequently links back to his favorite older posts. Kevin Carson's Shared Items is also worth reading; it's a list of posts from other blogs that he finds interesting.

Kung-Fu Monkey. This blog is written by someone who works as a writer in the entertainment industry, which explains the high quality of writing. He sounds like a closet agorist, although he hasn't specifically mentioned that philosophy. This post on the Extrapolated Everyday Bull**** Comparison has promoted Kung-Fu Monkey from my hitlist to my "read regularly" list.

Redpillguy's Blog - His blog is relatively new, so it's hard to judge. He doesn't really update his blog that often. On the other hand, he frequently cites my content, and that's certainly the sort of thing I appreciate.

Tranarchism is another new blog. It's too soon to judge the content. On the other hand, anyone who heavily cites my stuff can't be all bad. It's too infrequently updated.

Wally Conger's Blog is another good read. However, he really has two separate blogs mixed together. He has a lot of good stuff on agorism and libertarianism. However, he also likes to talk about his favorite movies and TV shows a lot.

Blog HitlistThere are blogs I'm currently evaluating to see if they're worth a regular read. I currently manage my hitlist through Google Reader.

Honorable Mention

These blogs have some interesting content, but they don't make it into my regular reading rotation. If they improved their content or improved their posting frequency, then they would be in my regular reading list. I check back occasionally, and on a slow day I might read them.

Bill Rempel - He talks about finance and trading. He really dislikes the Federal Reserve. I'm not sure if he's come all the way to agorism yet, but perhaps he can be coaxed. He's guilty of my #1 blog pet peeve: A PARTIAL RSS FEED!

Bored Zhwazi - Has some nice content, but it really isn't updated that often. It's worth checking back once every month or two.